Observed me in my walks, and fell in love.
He made his courtship, he confess’d his pain,
And offer’d force when all his arts were vain:
Swift he pursued; I ran along the strand,
Till spent and wearied on the sinking sand,
I shriek’d aloud, with cries I fill’d the air
To gods and men, nor god nor man was there:
A virgin goddess heard a virgin’s prayer.
For, as my arms I lifted to the skies,
I saw black feathers from my fingers rise;
I strove to fling my garment on the ground,
My garment turn’d to plumes, and girt me round;
My hands to beat my naked bosom try,
Nor naked bosom now nor hands had I;
Lightly I tripp’d, nor weary as before:
Sunk in the sand, but skimm’d along the shore,
Till, rising on my wings, I was preferr’d
To be the chaste Minerva’s virgin bird.
Preferr’d in vain! I now am in disgrace:
Nyctimene, the owl, enjoys my place.
“On her incestuous life I need not dwell
(In Lesbos still the horrid tale they tell),
And of her dire amours you must have heard,
For which she now does penance in a bird;
That, conscious of her shame, avoids the light,
And loves the gloomy covering of the night.
The birds, where’er she flutters, scare away
The hooting wretch, and drive her from the day.”
The raven, urged by such impertinence,
Grew passionate, it seems, and took offence,
And cursed the harmless daw; the daw withdrew.
The raven to her injured patron flew,
And found him out, and told the fatal truth
Of false Coronis, and the favour’d youth.
The god was wroth, the colour left his look,
The wreath his head, the harp his hand, forsook;
His silver bow and feather’d shafts he took,
And lodged an arrow in the tender breast
That had so often to his own been press’d.
Down fell the wounded nymph, and sadly groan’d,
And pull’d his arrow reeking from the wound;
And, weltering in her blood, thus faintly cried:
“Ah, cruel god! though I have justly died,
What has, alas! my unborn infant done,
That he should fall, and two expire in one?”
This said, in agonies she fetch’d her breath.
The god dissolves in pity at her death;
He hates the bird that made her falsehood known,
And hates himself for what himself had done;
The feather’d shaft that sent her to the Fates,
And his own hand that sent the shaft, he hates.
Fain would he heal the wound and ease her pain,
And tries the compass of his art in vain.
Soon as he saw the lovely nymph expire,
The pile made ready, and the kindling fire,
With sighs and groans her obsequies he kept,
And, if a god could weep, the god had wept.
Her corpse he kiss’d, and heavenly incense brought,
And solemnized the death himself had wrought.
But lest his offspring should her fate partake,
Spite of the immortal mixture in his make,
He ripp’d her womb and set the child at large,
And gave him to the centaur Chiron’s charge;
Then in his fury black’d the raven o’er,
And bade him prate in his white plumes no more.
Ocyrrhoe Transformed to a Mare
Ocyrrhoe, the daughter of Chiron, is transformed into a mare, for abusing her gift of prophecy.
Old Chiron took the babe with secret joy,
Proud of the charge of the celestial boy.
His daughter too, whom on the sandy shore
The nymph Chariclo to the centaur bore,
With hair dishevell’d on her shoulders, came
To see the child, Ocyrrhoe was her name;
She knew her father’s arts, and could rehearse
The depths of prophecy in sounding verse.
Once as the sacred infant she survey’d,
The god was kindled in the raving maid,
And thus she utter’d her prophetic tale:
“Hail! great physician of the world, all hail!
Hail! mighty infant! who in years to come
Shalt heal the nations and defraud the tomb.
Swift be thy growth! thy triumphs unconfined!
Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind.
Thy daring art shall animate the dead,
And draw the thunder on thy guilty head:
Then shalt thou die; but from the dark abode
Rise up victorious, and be twice a god.
And thou, my sire, not destined by thy birth
To turn to dust, and mix with common earth,
How wilt thou toss, and rave, and long to die,
And quit thy claim to immortality,
When thou shalt feel, enraged with inward pains,
The Hydra’s venom rankling in thy veins!
The gods, in pity, shall contract thy date,
And give thee over to the power of Fate.”
Thus, entering into destiny, the maid
The secrets of offended Jove betray’d:
More had she still to say; but now appears
Qppress’d with sobs and sighs, and drown’d in tears:
“My voice,” says she, “is gone, my language fails,
Through every limb my kindred shape prevails:
Why did the god this fatal gift impart,
And with prophetic raptures swell my heart?
What new desires are these? I long to pace
O’er flowery meadows, and to feed on grass;
I hasten to a brute, a maid no more:
But why, alas! am I transform’d all o’er?
My sire does half a human shape retain,
And in his upper parts preserves the man.”
Her tongue no more distinct complaints affords,
But in shrill accents and misshapen words
Pours forth such hideous wailings, as declare
The human form confounded in the mare,
Till by degrees accomplish’d in the beast,
She neigh’d outright, and all the steed expressed;
Her stooping body on her hands is borne,
Her hands are turn’d to hoofs and shod in horn;
Her yellow tresses ruffle in a mane,
And in a flowing tail she frisks her train.
The mare was finish’d in her voice and look,
And a new name from the new figure took.
Transformation of Battus to a Touchstone
Battus, a shepherd of Pylos, promises Mercury that he will not reveal his theft of the flocks of Admetus, which Apollo tended—The promise is violated, and Battus turned into a pumice-stone.
Sore wept the centaur, and to Phoebus pray’d.
But how could Phoebus give the centaur aid?
Degraded of his power by angry Jove,
In Elis then a herd of bees he drove,
And wielded in his hand a staff of oak,
And o’er his shoulders threw the shepherd’s cloak.
On seven compacted reeds he used to play,
And on his rural pipe to waste the day.
As once attentive to his pipe he play’d,
The crafty Hermes from the god convey’d
A drove, that separate from their fellows stray’d.
The theft an old insidious peasant view’d
(They call’d him Battus in the neighbourhood),
Hired by a wealthy Pylian prince
